[160] To the Same.
NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 1836.
MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--For a prince you are in letter-writing, and
you can call me Lord Orville, for I have a birthright claim to that
title.{17} Excuse this capricole of my pen; it has been drawing hard
enough at a sermon all the morning, and can't help cutting a caper
when it is let out. You won't get the due return for your good long
letter this time, nor ever, I think. I am taking comfort in the good
long letters that are going with mine, and of whose sending by this
conveyance I am the cause.
{FN 17: He was named after Lord Orville, the hero of Miss
Burney's "Evelina," which his mother had read with delight
shortly before his birth.}
This conveyance is Miss Searle; and if you and Mrs. Ware don't
cultivate her, or let her cultivate you, your folly will be
inconceivable.
Mrs. Jameson I have missed two or three chances of seeing,--very
bright sometimes, and very foolish others; but who shall resist such
intoxicating draughts as have for some years been offered to her! She
set off for Canada yesterday, going for her husband, since he could n't
or would n't come for her.
Ingham has just finished one of the most exquisite portraits of Miss
Sedgwick that eye ever saw. Did you see anything of it before you went?
Furness ['s book] is selling much, and I hear nothing but admiration,
save the usual quaver in the song about the part on miracles.
Apropos, . . . I think that the explication of the miracles must be
a moot and not a test point, and I would not break with the [161]
"Christian Examiner" upon it; and yet I think the heterodox opinions of
Ripley should have come into it in the shape of a letter, and not of a
review. It is rather absurd to say "We" with such confidence, and that
for opinions in conflict with the whole course of the "Examiner" and
the known opinions of almost all its supporters. . . .
Yours forever and a day,